112

JEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 11, No. 1, February 1996

EVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMMING BASED ECONOMIC DISPATC UNITS WITH NON-SMOOTH FUEL COST FUNCTIONS
Hong-Tzer Yang Member, IEEE Pai-Chum Yang Ching-Lien Huang Member, IEEE

Department o f Electrical Engineering National Cheng Kung University Tainan, 701 TAIWAN
Abstract - This paper develops an efficient, general economic dispatch (ED) algorithm for units with non-smooth fuel cost functions. Based on the evolutionary programming (EP) technique, the new algorithm is capable of determining the global or near global optimal dispatch solutions in the cases where the classical Lagrange based algorithms cease to be applicable. Effectiveness of the new algorithm is demonstrated on two example systems and compared to that of the dynamic programming, simulated annealing, and genetic algorithms. Practical application of the developed algorithm is additionally verified on the Taiwan power (Taipower) system. Numerical results show that the proposed EP based ED algorithm can provide accurate dispatch solutions within reasonable time for any type of fuel cost functions. Keywords: Economic Dispatch, Evolutionary Programming, Combinatorial Optimization

I. INTRODUCTION
Economic dispatch (ED) is an important daily optimization task in the power system operation. To solve effectively the ED problem, most calculus based industrial algorithms, e.g., the Lagrangian multiplier method, require the incremental cost curves to be of monotonically increasing nature or of piece-wise linearity. For the generating units virtually having non-monotonically increasing or non-linear incremental cost curves, the conventional procedure either ignores or flattens out the portions of the incremental cost curve that are not continuous or monotonically increasing. Inaccurate dispatch results are thus induced. In these cases, to obtain accurate dispatch results, needed are more general approaches without restrictions on the shape of fuel cost functions. Dynamic programming (DP) solution is one of the approaches to solving the inherently non-linear and discontinuous ED problem [1,2]. However, the problems of "curse of

dimensionality" [ l ] or local optimality [2] with the DP method are caused in the solution procedure. With the advent of stochastic search algorithms, the simulated annealing (SA) [3] and the genetic algorithms (GA) [4] were devoted to solving the highly non-linear ED problem without restrictions to the shape of fuel cost functions. Nevertheless, the SA based algorithm is difficult to tune the related control parameters of the annealing schedule and may be too slow when applied to a practical power system. On the other hand, the operations of reproduction and crossover in the GA, which are based on competitions within a single generation of population and based on probabilistic exchange of segments of encoded binary strings, may be detrimental to actually achieving an optimal solution [5]. Besides, the GA requires an encoding scheme on the decision variables to conduct its genetic operations. Different encoding schemes have significant influences on convergence of the GA. Encoding and decoding for each solution searched and the operations of crossover and mutation on binarycoded variables also waste much computer time. These problems degrade the effectiveness of the GA in solving the ED problem. In this paper, a novel evolutionary programming (EP) algorithm [5,6] is proposed to solve the ED problem for units with non-smooth fuel cost units. The stochastic mechanics, which combine offspring creation based on the performance of current trial solutions and competition & selection based on successive generations, form a considerably robust scheme for large-scale real-valued combinatorial optimization. The weaknesses of the algorithms mentioned above are circumvented. The proposed EP approach is capable of not only solving the ED with any type of fuel cost functions, analytical or empirical curves, but also obtaining the global or
near global minimum solution considering transmission

95 WM 167-7 PWRS A paper recommended and approved by t h e IEEE Power System Engineering Committee of the IEEE Power Engineering Society f o r presentation a t t h e 1995 IEEE/PES Winter Meeting, January 29, t o February 2 , 1995, New York, NY. Manuscript submitted J u l y 29, 1994; made a v a i l a b l e f o r p r i n t i n g November 23, 1994.

losses or not within reasonable execution time. Encoding and decoding schemes essential in the GA approach are not needed; considerable computation time can thus be saved. To validate our proposed approach, the EP algorithm is tested on three test systems including one practical power system. Numerical results obtained from the proposed EP, the DP [2], the SA [3], and the GA [4] metliods are compared. The practical system is used to verify that the proposed EP approach is applicable to a physical-sized power system ED problem.

0885-8950/96/$05.00 0 1995 IEEE

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Nomenclature
fuel cost function of the j t h unit, power generated by the jth unit, thej t h unit maximum power output, thejth unit minimum power output, power generated by the dependent unit, power generated by the combined-cycle unit, capacity of one combustion turbine, capacity of heat-recovery steam generator, transmission 1os s, number of committed thermal generating units, number of combustion turbines in the combined cycle unit, system load demand, scaling factor, number of individuals in a population, maximum number of generation, the ith individual of a population, objective function value ofp,, score of p, after competition, fuel cost coefficients of the jth unit, fuel cost coefficients with valve-point effects.

output W)

Figure 2:. Example net heat rate curve of a combined cycle unit with three gas turbines

11. ECONOMIC DISPATCH FORMULATION

The ED problem studied in this paper can be described as an optimization process with the following objective function and constraints:
N

Min
Pq j=1

FC,(Pgj)

s.t. power balance constraint:

N

D=C. PgJ- PL
F1

(2)

and generating capability constraints: Pg,mn <PgJ5 P g J m f o r j = l , ..., N (31 The fuel cost functions of the generating units are generally characterized by third-order polynomials: (4) FCj(P,) = aj + bjPgJ + cjPjJ +

The generating units with multi-valve steam turbines exhibit a greater variation in the fuel cost functions. Typically, the valve-point effects, due to wire drawing as each steam admission valve starting to open, produce ripple like heat rate curve [4,7], ,as illustrated in Fig. 1. The actual unit curve data therefore can not be represented by the polynomial function as in (4). Besides, a power generation system usually uses combined-cycle unit as peak load serving unit, which comprises a series of single-cycle gas turbines in conjunction with some heat-recovery steam generators (HRSGs). Figure 2 shows the net heat-rate curve of a combined-cycle unit with three gas turbines. Since the combustion unit is most economic when loaded with full capacity once it is placed on line, for economic operation the combustion turbine should be either filly loaded or completely turned down [8] in the ED. Hence, the operation of the combined-cycle unit is performed on a zero-one discrete basis. The ED with combinedcycle units becomes a mixed continuous-discrete optimization problem. In this paper, a unified approach using the EP technique is proposed to solve the above ED problem without any restriction to the fie1 cost characteristics. Before describing the solution procedure using the EP, the general schemes of the EP are briefed in the subsequent section.

111. EVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMMING ALGORITHM

The schematbc diagram of the EP algorithm is depicted in Fig. 3. The general scheme of the EP algorithm for optimization is summarized as follows [5,6].

Vector Representation of the Decision Vanables Competing pool

output (Mw) A, B, C, D, E Operating points of admission valves

Figure 1 . Example input-output curve with five valve points

Figure 3 . Schematic diagram of the evolutionary programming algorithm

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0 ) Vector Representation: The real-valued variabks to be determined in the EP algoritlp are represented as a trial n-dimensioned vectorp that is associated with the extremum of an objective functional f @ ) : R"-+ R. Each vectorp is an individual of the population to be evolvqd. I ) Initialization: An initial population of parent individuals p?, i =1, ..., N,, is selected randomly from a feasible range in each dimension. Typically, the distribution of initial trials is uniform. 2) Creation o f Offspring: Equal number of offspring p: , i =1, ... N , ,is generated by adding a Gaussian random variable with zero mean and preselected standard deviation to each component of p,. Therefore, individuals including parents and offspring exist in the competing pool (Fig. 3). 3 ) Competition & Selection: Each'individual in the competing pool must stochastically strive against other members The Np of the pool based on the functions @ i ) and&:). individuals with the best function values (minimum for the minimization problem) are selected to form a survivor set according to a decision rule. The individuals in the survivor set are new parents for the next generation. 4) Stopping Rule: The process of generating new trials and selecting those with best function values are continued until the function values are not obviously improved or the given count of total generations is reached.

U(Pg,-, Pg,,) denotes a uniform random variable ranging PgJm].The combined-cycle unit is stochastiover fPgJm,, cally given a discrete number n,belonging to (1, 2, ..., N,} that indicates thc number of combustion turbines fully loaded in the combined-cycle unit. The power generation of the combined-cycle unit P,,is then obtained by Pg,= n, x P , +Ps (6) ' where P, is the capacity of one combustion turbine, P, is the capacity of HRSG. B. Cmation ofofffpring An offspring vector p: is created from each parent p , by adding to each component of p, a Gaussian random variable with zero mean and a standard deviation proportional to the scaled cost values of the parent trial solution, i.e., (7) P; = [Pil> PG2> ...> PiJ> ...> PLNI P;= Pg, +N(O,0,") (8) f o r j =1, ..., N, j is not a combined-cycle unit where N(p, 0,") represents a Gaussian random variable with mean p and standard deviation ol. The standard deviation 5j indicates the range the offspring is created around the parent trial solution. o1is given according to the following equation:

(9) where frmn is the minimum cost value among the Np trial solI V . EVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMMING BASED ECONOMIC DISPATCH utions, P is a scaling factor, fp,is the value of the objective function associated with the trial vectorp, ,i.e., Let p I = [Pgl,Pgz, ...,P,, ..., PgN] be a trial vector desigN nating the ith individual of a population to be evolved. The elements of p , are the real power outputs of the committed N generating units, which are subjected to the capacity con- As gven in (l),fp, is to be minimized. The offspring p ; is straints in (3). In this paper, to meet exactly the load demand created according to the relative value offpi ;iffpr is relativein (2), a dependent generating unit is arbitrarily selected ly low, the offspring trial solution is created near the current from among the committed N units except for the combined solutionp, ;iffpl is relatively high, the next trial solution will cycle units. Let Pgd be the power output of the dependent be searched within a wider range. unit, then Pgd is calculated by : For the combined cycle units, the number of combustion N turbines fully loaded ricin (6) is added a random number uniPgd = D 4 - p ~ - P, (5) f o d y distributed among (-1,O, l}, but is limited to between Il;t 1 and N, inclusive to avoid the combined cycle unit off-line. Since the power loss is a function of the generation outputs and system topology, to determine the output of dependC. Competition & Selection ent unit Pgd and the power loss PL , an iterative algorithm or The Np parent trial vectors p,,i = 1, ..., N p and their loss penalty factors from power flow program are required. corresponding offspring p ; , i = 1, ...,Np contend for survive More directly, B-loss matrix of the power system can be util- with each other within the competing pool. The score for ized to calculate the power loss from the outputs of generateach trial vector after a stochastic competition is given by ing units [9]. In the example system of case 1 demonstrated NP wp,= wi in Sec. V, the B-loss matrix is used. The EP method implemt=l ented to solve the ED problem is stated in the following wt= 1, if subsections.

A. Initialization
The initial parent trial vector p l , i = 1,2, ...,Np , is determined by setting its jth components PgJ-U(PgJ,,, PgJ,), where j=1, ..., N, and j is not of a combined cycle unit.

=0, otherwise where the competitor p,is selected at random from among the 2Nptrial solutions based on r = [2Npuz + 11. [XI denotes the greatest integer less than or equal to x, and uI, U, are uniform random number ranging over [0, 11.

115

After competing, the 2Nptrial solutions, including the parents and the offspring, are ranked in descending order of the score obtained in (IO). The first N,trial solutions survive and are transcribed along with their objective functions fp, into the survivor set as the basis of the next generation. A maximum number of generations (is., iterations) N, is given. The search process is stopped as the count of generations reaches N,. As described above, the ED problem is solved by using the EP process without concerning the form of the objective function. Any shape of fuel cost functions of units can be dealt with in the EP search process. Since the cost function is directly employed as the performance index of the solution rather than the incremental costs (derivative of the cost functions), the differentiability of cost function and the monotonically increasing property of the incremental cost curves are not required any more as in classical Lagrange based algorithms. The following section illustrates the results of the proposed EP approach to solving the ED problem.

TABLE 1 BESTPARAMETER SETTINGOF THE EP Parameter Case 1 Case2 Case3

Scaling factor (p) Population size (Np)

0.1 30 30

0.1 30 50

0.01 50
1,000

Max. generation number ( N , )

TABLE 2 DISPATCH b S U L T X FROM EP, SA. AND DP IN CASE 1 FOR LOAD OF 1400 M W Methods Unit 1 Unit 2

(Mw)
DP
SA'
SAz

(Mw)
406.4

Unit 3 Total Gen. Losses Total cost (MW) (Mw) ( M Y ($1

360.2 359.546 376.123

676.8

1,443.4

43.4

6,642.459

406.734 677.152 1,443.434 43.434 6,642.657 100.052 986.273 1,462.448 62.448 6,639.504 997.921 1,462.769 62.769 6,639.181

'

EP 364.848 100.000 scaling factory = 80.01 scaling factory = IO. 1

V. APPLICATION EXAMPLE
A. Description of the Test Systems The proposed EP approach was numerically tested on three cases of ED problem. The test system in case 1 comprises three generating units. Fuel cost curves of the units were represented by thirdorder polynomial functions. The associated incremental costs are non-monotonically increasing. Multiple local minimum points therefore exist in the objective function of the system. Fuel cost functions of the generation units and the associated B-matrix for transmission loss calculation can be found in [2]. Results of the EP were compared with those from the DP with a zoom feature [2] and the SA approach [3] reported recently. In Case 2, the test system is composed of three generating units whereas the fuel cost functions take into account the 1 . The fuel cost funcvalve-point effects described in Sec, 1 tions of the generating units were expressed as FC; = FC, + e, x sin(5 x (pglrnm -p g l ) ) (11) The same problem has been solved by the GA approach in [4], where coefficients of fuel cost function in (1 1) can be found. In Case 3, the practical Taiwan power (Taipower) thermal system in year 1987 had 40 generating units with 3 combined-cycle units. Each combined-cycle unit consisted of 3 combustion turbines and 1 HRSG unit. Total capacities from 6345 MW to 9300 MW were committed to meet the 24-hour load demands from 5320 MW to 8708 MW. The fuel cost curves of the units were approximated by second-order polynomial functions such that the classical Lagrangian multiplier algorithm (h-iteration method) [9] can be used to verify the developed EP program. Considering the nature of combined-cycle unit in practical operation, the h-iteration

method was moldified to enumerate all combinations of the combustion turbines in the combined cycle unit. The EP algorithm has 3 parameters, as described in Sec. IV, to be set before starting the evolutionary process. After testing and evaduating different parameter combinations, parameters of the EP used in the three cases are listed in Table 1 for clarity. As noted in Table 1, unlike the annealing schedule of the SA algorithm [3], control parameters of the EP can be easily tuned to obtain satisfactory results. All the programs were developed using Turbo C language and run on PC-4186 computer. Results of these three testing cases are given below.

B. Testing Resulis Case 1 Dispatch results obtained from the proposed EP, the SA [3], and the DP approach with a zoom feature [2] are summarized in Table 2. Obviously, the solution space of the problem has two local optima, one of which is the global minimum solution. However, only the local optimal solution of $6642.459 can be found by the DP and the SA approaches (as shown in Table 2). Further tuning the scaling factor of the
cost ($)

6644

6642

1
1
0

+ ++ +

+I
I I I I

6640 -

6638

20

40

60

80

100

Number of run

Figure 4. Cost distribution of final solutions with 100 different initial trials in Case 1

116
TABLE 3 DISPATCH RESULTS FROM EP AND GA IN CASE 2 FOR LOAD O f 850 Methods Unit 1 Unit 2
cost ($)

8235.00

(MW)
GA' GA' GA' GA' 498.4 299.1 398.7 392.1 300.264 300.205 299.959 299.867 300.0

(MW
250.4 399.0 399.6 307.4 400.0 400.0 400.0 400.0 400.0

Unit 3 (MW)

Total Gen.

Total cost

100.5 150.8

(MW) 849.3
848.9 848.4 850.2 850.0 850.0 850.0 850.0 850.0

($1
8,239.02 8,225.30 8,222.07 8,389.92 8,234.07 8,234.11 8,234.24 8,234.29 8,234.22

8234.75

1
+
0

+I
100

50.1
149.7 149.736 149.795 150.041 150.133 150.0

EP' EP' EPZ EP2

*3

20

40

60

80

Number of run

Figure 5. Cost distribution of final solutions with 100

different initial trials in Case 2

'different runs of GA in [4], 'different runs of EP, 3optimal solution used for verification in [4].

SA to enlarge the search neighbourhood of the current solution (changing y from 0.01 to 0. I), one can obtain the global minimum solution of $6639.504 with higher probability. In contrast, the proposed EP approach can easily achieve the global optimal solution using the parameter setting given in Table 1. To investigate effects of the initial trial solutions on the final results, different initial trial solutions were given to the EP approach. Figure 4 shows the dispatch results of the EP when run 100 times with different random initial solutions. As shown in Fig. 4, about 95% of the solutions from the EP are located at the global optimum. However, the same test showed that only 14% (when y= 0.01) to 53% (when y= 0.1) of the solutions found by the SA approach were the optimal with the rest of the solutions entrapped in the local minimum solution. Videlicet, the proposed EP approach has more powerful ability to achieve the global optimum solution. The CPU time used by the EP program for this case averaged 0.09 sec. compared to 0.6 sec. used by the SA approach. Apparently, much less execution time (about one seventh) was needed for the proposed EP approach.

Case 2\

In this case, the fuel cost characteristics considering the valve-point effects were employed to test the performance of the proposed EP approach when compared to the GA approach. Since the power balance constraints of the ED problem were handled in conjunction with the fuel cost as the objective function to be minimized in the GA approach [4], the results obtained revealed that the power generation can not meet the load demand. Also, in the GA, the encoding and decoding schemes were required for the power generations to make feasible the genetic operators, while different encoding schemes resulted in different performance of GA. Table 3 shows the final dispatch results from the proposed EP and the GA approaches, where results from the better encoding scheme of the GA in [4] were used for comparison. As noted in Table 3, exact balance of power generation and load demand can be satisfied by the EP. In the meantime, the EP did not encode and decode the decision variables and did not resort to crossover and mutation operations on the binary-coded variables to perform the evolutionary computing. A lot of computer memory and computing time can thus be saved. The CPU time used by the EP (0.12 sec.) is far less than that by the GA (10.0 sec.). Different random initial trial solutions were further used to explore the converging characteristics of the EP. Figure 5 exhibits the final results when 100 random initial solutions were given. Although multiple local minimum solutions exkt in this case, the EP can still find out the optimal or

TABLE 4
OPnMAL COSTS (NT$$)FROM EP AND h-ITERATION h"0DS

CASE 3 FOR 24-HOUR &ONOMIC DISPATCH

7
8
9

Hour

10.

11*

12'

h-iteration
EP

7151778 7151778
0.0

6616323 6616409 0.00130

14'

6372545 6372567 0.000345

15'

6020843 6020855 0.00020

16'

6162956 6162966 0.000162

17'

5994532 5994543

6045002 6045009

6674603 6674603 0.0

20

8711369 10706244 11066826 10860027 8711373 10706297 11067019 10860346 0.000046 0.000495 0.001744 0.002937
21 22
23

Err %
Hour h-iteration

0.000184 0.0001 16
18

13

19

24

9141785 9141803

11269335 11586870 10998487 10572727 9357091 11269656 11587486 10998698 10573115 9357203 0.005316 0.001918 0.003670 0.001197

8911330 8911344

9585475 9585479

9387110 9387150

8719088 8719103

8327709 8327719

8202102 8202102 0.0

EP

E r r %

0.000197 0.002848

0.000157 0.000042

0.000426 0.000172 Oh00120

* Combined-cycle units were committed.

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near-optimal solutions that distribute between $8234.07 and $8234.73, most of which are even smaller than the 'optimal' solution of $8234.22 obtained by a verification program using dynamic programming [4].
Case 3 This case demonstrates the proposed EP approach is applicable to solve the practical ED problem. Dispatch results obtained from the EP and the h-iteration methods are shown in Table 4 for 24-hour load demands. Since the fuel cost functions were simplified and represented by second-order polynomials on purpose, the solutions obtained by the hiteration method should be optimal solutions. The solutions achieved by the EP, as shown in Table 4, are all near the optimal solutions with a maximum error of 0.0053 16% when compared to those of the Literation method. In this case, the EP approach totally consumed about 30 min. of CPU time for the 40-unit, 24-hour ED problem with an average of 75.3 sec. for one-hour ED. Though the practical application of the EP to solve the ED problem is verified in a power system with monotonically increasing incremental cost curves, the proposed EP approach can be applied to the difficult dispatch problem with any shape of fuel cost functions to which the classical Lagrange based method is not amenable. When actual fuel cost models of units without any approximation are considered, the optimal ED solutions from the EP approach can be used as the benchmark to off-line evaluate any approximated ED approach, either in the representation of unit fuel cost models or in the heuristic optimization process. This is one of the significant contributions possessed by the proposed EP approach to solving the ED problem.
VI. CONCLUSIONS

approach. In view of evaluating the approximated ED approach which simplifies the unit fuel cost models, the solutions yielded lby the EP method would be inevitable references.

VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Financial support from the National Science Council for the work reported in this paper is gratefully acknowledged.
VIII. REFERENCES
D.W. Ross and S. Kim, "Dynamic economic dispatch of generation," IEEE Trans. on Power Apparatus and Systems, Vol. PAS-99, No. 6, 1980, pp. 2060-2088. Z.X. Lianf and J.D. Glover, "A zoom feature for a dynamic programming solution to economic dispatch including transmission losses," IEEE Trans. on Power Systems, Vol. PWRS-7, No. 2, 1992, pp. 544-550. K.P. Wong and C.C. Fung, "Simulated annealing based economic dispatch algorithm," IEE Proceedings-C, Vol. 140, No. 6, 1993, pp. 509-515. D.C. Walters and G.B. Sheble, "Genetic algorithm solution of economic dispatch with valve point loading," IEEE Trans. on Power Systems, Vol. PWRS-8,No. 3, 1993,pp. 1352-1331. D.B. Fogel, Sysi'em Identification through Simulated Evolution: A Machine Learning Approach to Modelling, Ginn Press, Needham, MA, 1991. D.B, Fogel, "An introduction to simulated evolutionary optimization," IEEE Trans. on NarralNetworks, Vol. 5, No. 1, Jan. 1994, pp. 3-14. IEEE Committee Report, "Present practices in the economic operation of power system," IEEE Trans. on Power Apparatus and Systems, Vol. PAS-90, July/Alugust 1971, pp. 1768-1775. D.Q. Tran, "A ctombinatorid optimization based economic constrained dispatch with raise and lower control reserve constraint and combinedcycle unit discrete optimum loading," presented at the IEEEPES 1993 Winter Meeting, OH, U.S.A, Paper No. 93 WM 157-8 PWRS, Feb. 1993. A.J. Wood and B.F. Wollenberg, Power Generation, Operation and Control, John Willey, New York, 1984.
Hong-Tzer Yang received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan in 1982 and 1984, respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from National Tsing-ha University, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan in 1989. He is now a technical superintendentof Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology. He is also an associate professor of Electrical Engineering Department at National Cheng-Kung, University. His present research interests are neural networks and expert system applications in power systems. Dr. Yang is a member of Phi Tau Phi, and the IEEE PES and CSS. Pai-Chuan Yang received the B.S.E.E. degree from National Taiwan Institute of Technology, Taipei, and the M.S.E.E. degree from National TsingHua University, Hsin-Chu, in 1986 and 1988, respectively. He is currently working toward his Ph.D. degree at National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. His research interests are on the production simulation and unit commitment of power systems. Ching-Lien Huang received B.S. degree in electncal engineering from National Cheng-Kung, University, Tainan, Taiwan, in 1957, and M.S.E.E. degree from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1973. Since 1964, he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng-Kung University, where he is now a professor. His major research interests are on high voltage engineenng, power system switching surge and protection, and power system planning.

'

An evolutionary programming approach has been proposed and demonstrated to be a powerful optimization process in solving the highly non-linear and discontinuous economic dispatch problem where the classic Lagrange based algorithms can not be directly applied. The proposed EP approach was compared to the related methods intended to serve this purpose, such as the DP with a zoom feature, the SA, and the GA approaches. By means of stochastically searching multiple points at one time and considering trial solutions of successive generations, the EP approach avoids entrapping in local optimal solutions as in the DP with a zoom feature and the SA methods. Also, disadvantages of huge memory size required by the DP and long execution time required by the SA method are ameliorated. Moreover, intellectual schemes of encoding and decoding entailed by the GA approach are not needed in the proposed EP approach. The problem of power unbalance previously
existing in the solution of GA is circumvented as well in this

paper. In the practical ED problem, any form of fuel cost functions, smooth or not, can be dealt with by the proposed EP

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Discussion
J.T.MA and L.L. LAI, (Energy Systems Group, City University, London E C l V OHB, England, UK): The authors are to be congratulated for an interesting paper. It would be appreciated if the following points could be clarified:
1. The authors present a comparison between results using EP and other algorithms, such as SA, GA and lambda iteration. According to our experience, EP is better than GA in searching f o r a global optimum but not in CPU execution time, because EP has to compute fitnesses for individuals of twice the population size, while GA computes fitnesses only for one population size at each generation. Do the authors use the same size of population for both EP and GA in the comparison to get the conclusion that EP is better than GA in CPU execution time? Could the fitness computation based on B-loss-matrix need less computer time than that for the encoding and decoding?

population size, number of maxiiiium generation, and other control parameter settings of both EP and GA approaches in the Case 2, is further summarized in Table D1.
2. It is noted that the power loss calculations (B-loss matrix) were not considered in Case 2 where the results of EP approach were compared to those of the GA. However, if the power losses are to be taken into account, the computer time for the fitness computation based on B-loss matrix or other schemes is additionally needed for both EP and GA approaches.
3 . The averaged time for one-hour ED execution time when using the h-iteration method is 0.4 sec. Obviously, the

time is much shortel- than that needed by the EP approach.

Tahle D1
COMPARISON OF EP AND GA APPROACHZS IN TEE CASE 2 OF OUR PAPER

2. The one-hour ED execution time of EP in Case 3 is only 75.3 seconds? What is the time when using the lambda iteration method?

EP
Population size Number of max. generation
Number of encoded binary bits

GA

30
50

100 100 11 0 95 0.01

Manuscript received February 21, 1995.

Crossoverprobability Mutation probability

N.T. Yang, P.C. Yang, and C.L. Huang: We are grateful to the discussersfor their interest in ow paper. The questions of the discussers are clarified as follows.
1. In terms of the number of individuals evaluated per generation, the EP approach indeed has to compute fitness functions for twice the population size. However, due to lack of
e e

Scaling fictor

01

10

Execution time (sec)

0.12

encoding and decoding the decision variables, and crossover and mutation operations on encoded binary bits according to a uniform-distributed random number generator,

the EP approach needs less total execution time than does the GA method. Besides, as mentioned in our paper, based on competitions within a single generation of population and based on probabilistic exchange of segments of encoded binary strings, the operations of reproduction and crossover in the GA niay be detrimental to actually achieving an optimal solution. Comparison of execution time,

Nevertheless, the proposed EP approach is focused on the ED problem with non-smooth fuel cost functions, the problem to which the classical Lagrange based algorithms (e.g., the h-iteration method) cease to be applicable. As pointed out in our paper, the optimal solution of the EP approach can be used as the benchmark to off-line evaluate any approximated ED approach, either in the representation of unit fuel cost models or in the heuristic optimnization process. Case 3 of our paper aimed to demonstrate that the proposed EP approach is capable of solvlng the practical ED problem. The fuel cost functions were simplified and represented by second-order polynomials on purpose that the h-iteration method can be used to achieve the optimal solution for comparison to that of the proposed EP approach.
Manuscript received April 17, 1995.